Axiological and cultural specifics of the interpretation of the concept of "sin" in modern Catholicism (on the example of digitized sermons of the Russian Catholic clergy)

Silantieva Tatiana Sergeevna Graduate student, The Department of Management, Marketing and Foreign Economic Activities, MGIMO University 109 Vernadsky Ave., Moscow, 119571, Russia silvestris10@mail.ru

Introduction

Catholicism, as you know, is one of the branches of Christianity — the world religion, which is of significant importance in the context of international cooperation. In Russia, this denomination combines the "Western" worldview, philosophy and a certain "etiquette" with the tradition and cultural specifics of the Russian mentality. The cultural synthesis that is being formed in such communities is of research interest, including from the point of view of the importance of understanding those processes of modern transformation that are associated with value attitudes and directly affect the behavior of believers, their communication with each other and with other groups in a broad domestic and international context (and this is not only about the religious, but also about non—religious - social, household, etc. communication).

Of particular importance here are modern interpretations of the basic concepts of Christianity, which concentrate the quintessence of the value prism of Christianity (that is, they are, if we use philosophical and cultural vocabulary, "cultural constants").

One of such concepts, which is of enormous importance for Christianity as a whole, is the concept of "sin". Being among the main general Christian concepts, this concept appears to the ordinary consciousness as a concentration of unchangeable meaning, that is, having a strictly defined logical content and scope. It is clear that when determining these parameters, one should rely on the text of the Bible, as well as on those interpretations that have the status of canonical (for Catholics, this is primarily the Bible, the works of the Holy Fathers and some other church texts, for example, the Catechism of the Catholic Church). However, the appeal to these seemingly unshakable authorities does not remove the question of historical and cultural-specific interpretations of these "interpretations". And taking into account the fact that culture itself is defined by many researchers (Milton Bennett, Andrey Smirnov, etc.) as a kind of context, the question of filling this concept in the value consciousness of specific people (in this case, representatives of modern religious communities, especially those formed at the junction of cultures) remains open.

The degree of development of the topic. Nowadays, a significant amount of scientific research is devoted to the study of the value content of culture. The axiological prism is also actively used by the philosophy of culture. Among the fundamental philosophical works in this direction are the works of S. S. Avernitsev ^[1], V. V. Bibikhin ^[2], A. Ya. Gurevich ^[3], E. M. Meletinsky ^[4], and others. Detailed approaches to the study of this problem field are presented in books and articles by O. N. Astafieva ^[5], A. A. Krotov ^[6], A. A. Pelipenko ^[7], Yu. P. Simonov ^{[8, 9]}, A.V. Smirnov ^[10], A.V. Kamentsa ^[11], S. V. Lurie ^[13], A. G. Yakovenko ^[7] and others.

The study of the semantic content of the concept of "sin" in modern Catholicism is of interest to many researchers. Among them are L. I. Zhukovskaya ^[14], A.V. Lebedev ^[15], G. N. Mehed ^[16], E. V. Novokreschennykh and D. D. Koksi ^[17], L. V. Popova and I. Y. Popov ^[18], T. B. Radbil ^[19], V. V. Saigin ^[20] and others .

Nevertheless, the field of interpretation of this concept in a particular part of Russian society, namely among Russian Catholics, still remains poorly studied.

The purpose of the work is to study the current trends in the interpretation of the concept of "sin" that exist in the community of Russian Catholics. It was decided to turn first of all to the analysis of the sermons of the modern Russian Catholic clergy, and to begin with — to consider the existing trends on the example of a number of digitized sermons provided in various sources in text form.

This purpose of this study is specified in a number of tasks that determine the design of the study, namely:

1) to identify specific religious groups, the analysis of the discourse of which will clarify the existing interpretations of this concept;

2) select a relevant methodology that allows you to start analyzing these interpretations;

3) correlate the results obtained with the basic text establishing framework interpretations (in this case, it will be the catechism of the Catholic Church).

Methodology of philosophy of culture, axiology and cultural anthropology in the study of the problem of interpretation of "cultural constants"

The study of the dynamics of the value foundations of culture is one of the most popular in our anthropological and philosophical—cultural prisms, which allows us to trace the most significant "cultural constants" in their specific (and therefore subject to scientific analysis) manifestations. At the same time, the very formulation of the question of "constants" in this context needs at least an explanation.

Two main approaches to "cultural constants" have developed in Russian science during 2000-2020.

The first one, used not only in scientific, but also in journalistic discourse, considers this concept as an unchanging (literally constant) socio–psychological reality that constitutes a constellation of "eternal values" of a particular culture or even universal "universals" that defines the picture of the world of its bearers and ultimately sets certain vectors of its development ^{[7, p. 77]}; ^{[21, p. 14-41]}; ^{[22, p. 183-185]}. Moreover, some authors believe that "cultural constants" have a universal nature (A. A. Pelipenko even introduces the term "pervotectone" ^{[7, p. 78]}; ^{[23, p. 81]}); they bring them closer to the so-called "moral absolutes" ^{[16, p. 28]}, often identifying moral and religious dimensions those values that are meant ^{[15, pp. 14-17]} (however, not all experts agree with the identification of religious norms and morality as such ^[24]). Other representatives of this trend insist on the absolute originality of these values, point to their culturally specific nature and, as a rule, insist on the exclusivity of the culture on behalf of which they speak ^{[25, p. 129]}. In addition to the obvious ethno- and cultural-centrisms, the latter approach faces a logical contradiction, since in the end it can explain the possibility of similar values of other cultures only by their genetic kinship with their own (which sometimes directly contradicts historical facts). In general, both trends within the framework of the first approach are fundamentally insensitive to those manifestations of culture that are not included in their own horizon. Which, however, would not make any difference if it were not precisely a fundamental attitude, and not the features of cultural optics, which many researchers paid attention to, including the author of the term "rich description" Gilbert Ryle (although this term entered the broad scientific context primarily thanks to Clifford Geertz ^{[26, p. 3-30]}): to notice an event different from your own expectations is a great success. So big that G. Ryle proposed a new method of studying foreign cultural realities — a "rich description", which allows you to concentrate foreign cultural material so that it eventually gets the opportunity to reveal itself on its own basis. In this, the "rich description" is close to the phenomenological approach, one of the main tasks of which is to try to get away from the dictates of stereotypes and "listen" to things by themselves. Then "cultural constants" can be studied without requiring them to be "constant" — after all, if you give the opportunity to say things themselves, they will not necessarily turn out to be what they appear in expectations (including theoretical ones).

It is this idea that the second approach to "cultural constants" is based on, believing that this phrase denotes only a conditionally stable education from the field of social psychology, which has an ambivalent structure at both the social and individual levels and reveals itself depending on environmental conditions ^{[10, p. 295]}; ^{[23, p. 81-90]}, concentrating in language and logical-grammatical structures ^{[27, p. 135-168]}; ^{[11, 28, 29, 30]}.

Note: "conditionally stable" "cultural constants" can be called due to the relatively slow (over historical time) dynamics of their fluctuations from one pole of evaluation to another; at the same time, even within the lifetime of one generation, such fluctuations can happen more than once. That is why in psychological anthropology it is customary not to talk about constants as such, but rather about the "cultural scenario" of possible reactions to environmental challenges ^{[13, p. 12-14]}. Thus, "cultural constants" are understood rather as a system of meanings that are attached to certain positions in certain socio-cultural realities ^{[13, p. 18]}. The relative "weakness" of this position lies in its relativism, which, it would seem, contradicts the initial attitude to the search for a stable value foundation of culture. However, if we continue the analogy with construction, the "building material" itself is perceived as plastic, not rigid. Well, such materials are also found in construction.

One way or another, the moral and at the same time religiously charged concept of "sin" is among the fundamental concepts of at least three world religions; it also has significance for the Abrahamic religions. Christianity, today still the most widespread religion in the world, is largely based on this concept, taken from the arsenal of culture that developed millennia ago. A natural question arises: to what extent does the concept of "sin" retain its original meaning in our days, when multi-vector socio-cultural changes have literally overwhelmed the whole world? In the search for an answer to this question, it seems correct to turn to the study of specific cultural communities, for which the concept of "sin" has retained a significant moderating potential. One of these communities is the community of Russian Catholics.

According to rough estimates, there are about 600 thousand Catholics in Russia ^[31], more than 300 diocesan priests serve in the country, and many of them are ethnic Russians. According to the Catholic Church, "Revelation can deepen even today thanks to its correct comprehension" ^[32], therefore, the development of society, technological progress and various social and cultural phenomena are inevitably reflected in the position of the Church, broadcast, among other sources, from the pulpit and resonating among the parishioners. The question of what trends can be traced in the interpretation of the basic Christian concepts among Catholics, especially those living in an Orthodox country, cannot but arouse interest.

The Semantics of Sin in Modern Catholicism: a case of digital Sermons of the Russian clergy

Given the existence of a significant number of different sources for collecting material, it seems advisable to start by paying attention to the following:

— The Catechism of the Catholic Church is an official document containing the interpretation of the doctrine and principles of morality of the Catholic Church. The Russian edition of the Catechism was published only in 2001, but the document itself was originally approved in 1992. The second chapter of the document contains a separate article detailing the definition and interpretation of the concept of sin within the dogmas of the Catholic Church.

— sermons of the Russian Catholic clergy recorded in text format, in which the concept of "sin" was directly touched upon.

For empirical analysis, 15 texts of sermons by Russian-speaking priests serving in various major cities of Russia, such as Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tula, Kazan, Chelyabinsk, Saratov, etc. were selected. The sample included sermons for the period from the autumn of 2022, in text form posted on various Internet resources (social networks, parish sites, archives of sermons) containing the lexeme "sin" and its derivatives such as "sin", "sinner", "sinner". It should be noted that the ratio of the selected texts to the texts of sermons that do not contain a mention of sin at least directly is approximately 1:15 or more. Passages lexically and meaningfully related to the concept under study were selected from the texts of the selected sermons.

Then, by the method of quantitative content analysis, the cases of the use of the lexeme "sin" and its derivatives were calculated and systematized. The analysis of the entire selected array of text data was also carried out for the frequency of use of the available tokens. The results of the calculation were visualized by creating a cloud of words, shown in Figure 1. For comparison, a similar method was used to analyze the text of the article "Sin" of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Figure 2).

Further, by conducting a discourse analysis, certain codes were assigned to selected passages of sermons based on the general content: love, repentance, forgiveness, temptation, salvation. The frequency of occurrence of these codes is shown in the diagram below in comparison with the number of mentions of specific sins:

Diagram 1 Frequency of occurrence of assigned codes in selected passages of sermons

Diagram 1 Frequency of occurrence of assigned codes in selected passages of sermons

As can be noted on the basis of the data provided above, the topic of sin in the analyzed sermons is reduced rather to questions of love and repentance, rather than revealing the specific features of sins as such. The relationship between man and God, issues of conversion and repentance, God's love for man and His mercy and, as a result, forgiveness and salvation — as a rule, this is what we are talking about. Specific sins, even when mentioned, are not subjected to thorough analysis in digitized text sermons, but rather become an illustration to the leitmotivs of the sermons listed earlier.

Conclusion

As a result of the study, the following conclusions were obtained:

1) The theme of sin in sermons is an infrequent phenomenon. As one of the clergy explained his position in a private interview, "this will not lead to Christ."

2) The main emphasis in the selected sermons is not on sin as such, but on God's love for man, mercy, the need for repentance and, as a result, receiving forgiveness.

3) Consideration of specific sins is also not a frequent topic, not of the sermon itself, but also of its individual fragments. Nevertheless, based on expert interviews, it can be concluded that these issues, although rarely, are raised in oral sermons (which, however, are not subsequently placed in text form) and, moreover, are subjected to detailed analysis, and are also accompanied by a number of instructions and a number of illustrations "from personal experience". the priest.

4) The hypothesis that any interpretations of the concept of "sin" not recorded in the Catechism will be found in the digitized sermons in text form has not been confirmed. However, this does not mean that such interpretations cannot exist in principle. In order to search for them in further research, it is proposed to turn to a wider array of data, namely: audio and video materials of sermons; official appeals and resolutions of representatives of the Catholic Church; interviews of clergy; interviews of laypeople; materials used by catechists in preparing adults for baptism or joining the Catholic Church; data from forums and social networks used by members of Catholic communities.

So, content analysis, as well as discourse analysis of digitized sermons of the Russian Catholic clergy available in Russian, showed that the concept of "sin" and the semantic fields associated with this seme are relatively rare here. The scientific approach forbids searching for straightforward explanations of this fact, but it does not forbid raising further questions and putting forward hypotheses that contribute to a more complete understanding of the processes affecting the formation and translation of these value interpretations.